Big Picture: could I do that?

1. 'could I do that?Lisa Gornick gets to me with almost every one of her film drawings. Sometimes (today) her drawing leads to a blog post. Here, in Big Picture, the little figure, even from the back, seems full of wonder at the image on the wall. I related immediately to her wonder, and to the question it prompts. Another drawing a few weeks ago took me back to the novel chapters I lost when my laptop died. & the lower case titles help, too: they remind me that I'm quiet & curious wellywoodwoman at heart, weeding and mulching (sweet-pea straw, seaweed, untreated wood chips from a son’s carpentry) and waiting for another son to deliver horse manure. Not Wellywood Woman with Wellington Boots on, Kicking Bus Tires in Courtenay Place, Cocktail Glass in Hand.

Big Picture also reminded me that I write this blog because I asked 'could I do that?' Could I explore my experience as a woman within filmmaking culture(s), write about it, make up a screenplay about women engaging with those cultures, and then turn the screenplay into a film? Today, it looks like I can. This week, thinking about women’s participation in filmmaking. Filming our clip for PassItOn. And then graduation, walking up onto the Michael Fowler Centre stage, standing there while someone read a short abstract of my research, receiving my PhD, then climbing more stairs, to sit behind university staff. (Not easy.)

2. More questions
Of course, after ‘could I do that?’ come other questions. ‘do I want to do that?’ and ‘how do I do that?’ Feature filmmaking’s hard for everyone. It demands—as I’m constantly reminded—ongoing skill development, and deep commitment to the sustained hard work of problem-solving, assertiveness and alliances. Resilience. Tenacity. For women, statistics like those from the Cannes Film Festival show that there are also systemic issues that affect our progress. Now that I've moved from 'could I do that?' and 'do I want to do that?' to 'how do I do that?' it's a little late for statistics to deter me, but collectively, whether they're generated nationally or internationally, they're daunting.

Fortunately, if the answer to ‘do I want tell stories on screen?’ is ‘YES’, there are many options. For someone who wants to have an (intermittently) regular income and loves television, there's television. In New Zealand, a high proportion of the ‘go-to’ writers for television are women, and I’ve heard that some pragmatic women writers and directors choose to work in television because of the economic benefits. Some of these women make feature length telemovies.

For someone like Anne Flournoy, who describes herself as a ‘reformed Sundance filmmaker’, and makes a webseries, The Louise Log, autonomy and peace of mind are important, so they affect her choices:

I'd finish a film, put it in a ‘jiffy’ bag, and send it off to a film festival. This was how you got noticed, and if you were really lucky, got some press. The brass ring, never assured, was a distribution deal with a major company. Today, thanks to the Internet, I've short-circuited this process—and transformed my work and my life...Peace of mind has followed. I can snarl at ‘powerful’ people. I can even spend an entire party with my back to the crowd, bent over the hors d'oeuvres. I hadn't realized that my filmic need for a movie star to ‘attach’ to my script, or my quest for a producer with access to financing, had warped my social life for years. Whenever I met someone, my mind raced to who they knew, if they'd be willing to help me, and, most urgently, how I could start a conversation with them when I felt so desperate and fraudulent...[Now] there is an immediate audience for my work, and the rest is up to me.

Other women, like me, are drawn by the feature film’s long form, the idea of a big screen and a community sitting in front of it, watching my film together. (I also love the idea of distributing a film through the internet and on cellphones

To make a feature film, we need money. In New Zealand that usually means approaching our state film funder, the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC). And according to my PhD research it has a gender problem; its investment in women writers and directors is far less than its investment in men, in its feature film programmes, in its short film programme—the traditional 'pathway' to feature filmmaking—and in various other programmes. This is a concern, because New Zealand ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985; as a state, New Zealand—and its agencies, like the NZFC—must encourage the participation of women in public life on equal terms with men (article 7). And screen-based storytelling is certainly part of public life.

But whatever the NZFC statistics measure, they are only a starting point. Sometimes but not always, the gender imbalance I found was because fewer women applied for assistance. Fewer projects with women writers than with men writers applied for early feature film development funding. (Were women whose short films played at 'A' list festivals not as well nurtured at the NZFC as the men? Did some women choose not to apply for 'peace of mind' reasons? Did women writers find it more difficult to find a producer than men did?) But at this early stage, the projects received funding in roughly the same proportion as the applications made. Further on in the development process projects with women writers became progressively less successful at gaining support. (Were the projects too 'different', for staff, readers, private investors, distributors? Is there a shortage of good advisers for women's scripts? If given a choice, when the competition gets more intense, do most women and men favour a project written and/or directed by a man.

At Cannes, was there no woman-directed film in competition because there were fewer women's projects in the mix this year? In the recession, was the competition for finance so strong that financiers resorted to a default project evaluation that favoured men as directors? Or...? Or...?

When the NZFC released some statistics about the first stage of its its low-budget Escalator Te Whakapiki programme, funding four features a year over three years, I didn't want to respond. It felt too complicated, too hard. But another Lisa Gornik picture Keep on Trucking, encouraged me to give it a go.

3. Escalator Te Whakapiki

Escalator Te Whakapiki is ‘specifically designed to support directors who are ready to step up to their first feature film’, and is ‘all about teams’. I argued in an earlier post that it appeared to be oriented to male applicants; its culture compromises some women's 'do I want to do that?' and 'how do I do that?' Later, the NZFC made some effort to encourage women to participate, through film-related guilds and organisations. (And I recently heard an NZFC staff member say that the organisation is trying to open up access generally).

The initiative received applications from 251 teams, with 753 individual story ideas. The statistics released show two things only, the gender of NZFC's primary contact within each team, and how many women were in the twelve teams chosen to participate in the programme's 'boot camp'—a male concept, to me—from which four projects will be chosen for funding. The NZFC's primary contact was with a man for 173 teams, and with a woman for the balance, about a third. There are no details about whether the contacts were directors ‘ready to step up’, or held other roles. In the boot camp teams there are twenty-six men and six women. Women’s participation in these teams is in roughly the same proportion (18.75%) as their participation as writers and directors of the feature films the NZFC funded for production between 2003 and 2009 (16%). But not all the six women are directors.

Because of the programme’s aims, from a gender perspective, there are two things to measure, not included in these statistics; next year the NZFC will collect and analyse information more rigorously. The first is the participation of women directors who are ready to step up to their first feature films. The second is women’s participation within teams, with a distinction between the storytellers (writers and directors) and the producers and technicians, and a category for storytellers who are also producers.

Who authors the story ideas is crucial. As Rachel Millward of London's Birds Eye View said in a recent debate:

Films are a hugely powerful force in our culture. So, just as I want more than four women in cabinet, so I want better representation of women's stories on screen….Of course men can make wonderful films about women…but that doesn't make it OK to champion so few female creatives. I want to hear women tell me stories.

I share her longing: I want to hear women tell me stories, and care deeply about their presence in Escalator Te Whakapiki teams as the storytellers. If they don't apply and they're not selected and supported to make their first feature film, they will fall behind the selected male directors on that career escalator, just as they fall behind men on the traditional NZFC funding pathways.

Historically women participate more often as producers of New Zealand feature films than as writers/directors. Rachel Millward again:

...women in film are tending to go into management/production roles rather than writing/directing. Producing is an important and often very creative role, and great that more women are making their mark in this way. But it's as if there's a resistance to women telling their own stories rather than facilitating men to tell theirs.

Again, I agree with Rachel Millward. I think too that the ‘as if there’s a resistance’ sometimes comes from women as well as from men. The culture of filmmaking needs to shift in some way, to ‘as if there’s a longing’ for women to tell our/their own stories, a longing that’s shared throughout filmmaking culture, by the NZFC, by producers and by women writers and directors.

Aspects of attitudes to statistics about women filmmakers remind me of attitudes to violence against women. Many people used to find it hard to talk about violence against women, or still do. There's a 'silence' issue for some people about the statistics too, and about the realities behind them. This week, a man, filmmaker and blogger The Kid in the Front Row has written about this topic, in two landmark posts. In the second, The Missing Voice of Women in Film, responding to comments on the first, he said

...it was great to see people engaging in a difficult subject, one that's hard to grasp and discuss because, it never really gets discussed. It gets mentioned, then passed over.

Then he goes on to identify

…a feeling of helplessness. That for this issue to be taken seriously, Spielberg needs to deal with it, or Julia Roberts needs to start a campaign; rather than us exploring the notion that we play a part, as writers, directors, actors, bloggers, etc.

Attempting to silence those who speak out is a strategy that helps perpetuate silence. Director Ruth Torjussen experienced this reality when she organised the You CANNES Not Be Serious petition and she received

...a sudden rush of emails saying that the petition could actually do more harm than good and that we should stop moaning and ‘get on with it’.

I remember working in a women's refuge years ago and listening to women whose friends and family had said similar things to them, that (often 'for the sake of the children') they should accept their husbands' and partners' violence as part of life and just 'get on with it'. Acting to stop the violence, or speaking out about it, would 'do more harm than good'. For the sake of our film work, should we stay silent about inequity?

Some women and men who do speak out blame women writers and directors. They say that it's usually women writers' and directors' fault if their projects don't move forward, that some women aren't tough or competitive or competent or hard working enough. Blaming women is also a common tactic in debates about violence against women.

A couple of years ago there was an advertising campaign about domestic violence where a series of men, some well known, reiterated 'It's not OK'. To get from resistance to women telling our own stories, to a widely shared longing for women's films, do we need ongoing campaigns that include more men and women, like You CANNES Not Be Serious, saying 'Here are the statistics. They're not OK'?

The Kid in the Front Row's made a start. He concludes:

My hope is that we can start to understand and appreciate the depth of this issue. It's not simple, there are many layers to it. My hope is that we can begin to see it as something that affects all of us and is caused by all of us. And my belief is that by being more aware and by discussing it—we can begin to change things.

In the meantime, what might encourage more women to create teams and to join teams for next year’s Escalator Te Whakapiki, especially women who want to make a feature? One possibility is a separate initiative for women. Another is setting up a series of intensive workshops for women who plan to join or create teams in next year’s Escalator Te Whakapiki.

I like the idea of a separate initiative, because, as research shows, women compete differently. And I got a new perspective on this from the You CANNES Not Be Serious campaign, among the comments on the You CANNES Not Be Serious petition, where two women compare filmmaking to sport. Leigh Ryan writes that she was

…shocked to discover the level of inequity in a festival that celebrates all facets of human experiences. Categories need to be created beyond the standard. Men and women should compete with their own sex just as in sport. The way the system is now is blind and creates a false set of values.

And Elka Kerkhofs says:

Why should we women compete with men in the first place? Cannes should set up a competition for women directors to compete with other female directors. Makes common sense, just like at the Olympic Games, women don't compete in the male dominated athletics now do we...... No we have a separate competition! Women just work differently and we have different sensibilities and different speed of working! It clearly makes sense that women should not try and swim upstream in a male dominated industry but be a separate river flowing downstream alongside the already very established male river!

I've observed that some women's 'different' sensibilities express themselves as much in filmmaking as elsewhere. In a very simple example, on Jeff Steele’s blog Film Closings, few of us women participated in the comments until he wrote about caring for his dying mother, instead of going to Cannes. Until then, I wondered if Stacey Parks and I were his only women readers.

Although I imagine that the idea of a separate programme—at the NZFC or within a major festival—would (like a quota) horrify many women writers and directors it could be a partial, temporary, solution until the present imbalance is redressed. And if more justification is necessary, what about all the research that says that young people often learn better and more happily in single sex schools? At the moment, women directors who want to make their their first features have to fit into the 'boys school' culture which suits some but not others, and the Escalator Te Whakapiki programme is not a good co-ed model.

As for the second possibility, who could organise intensive workshops for women who might join or create Escalator Te Whakapiki teams next year? The various guilds—the New Zealand Writers Guild (NZWG), the Screen Directors Guild of New Zealand (SDGNZ), the NZ Film Video & Technicians Guild (Techos Guild), NZ Equity—are obvious possibilities. And Nga Aho Whakaari, Women in Film & Television (WIFT), Script to Screen. But after reading all their submissions made to the New Zealand Film Commission Review, I'm not optimistic that any of them will make that kind of commitment individually, or work co-operatively to advance the interests of women filmmakers.

4. New Zealand Film Commission Review and gender

We've been waiting and waiting for the results of this review, undertaken by Peter Jackson and David Court. I have a theory that we’ll be presented with the outcome of the review indirectly. A few weeks ago, the Government promised a new-look science R&D spend that weighs public investment towards commercially successful companies, and, like science, filmmaking—and all screen-based media—will benefit New Zealand most if it creates New Zealand-owned intellectual property for global distribution. So, maybe, following the review, public investment in film will be more slanted towards commercially successful companies oriented to global markets than it was in the past. But I’ll be very surprised if the review mentions gender.

Peter Jackson has said: "The film making talent of NZ does not reside in the office of its producers–it’s to be found in the hearts and minds of its writers and directors". And for economic reasons presumably he—and the Government—would want that talent pool to be as large and deep as possible. And it can't be unless it includes women writers and directors. Peter Jackson may also—like Meryl Streep*—know that for the last two decades the increase in women's employment has been the driving force behind economic growth, so more women making films could significantly benefit the industry. But, although the directors associated with Peter Jackson's projects tend to be men, his primary co-writers are women, so he may not view New Zealand women's low participation as writers and directors of feature films as reflecting anything other than women's choices and comparative talent. And in the written submissions to the review from film industry organisations—the NZWG, the SDGNZ, the Techos Guild, Nga Aho Whakaari, Script to Screen and NZ Equity there is no reference to gender, although the Techos Guild, NZ Equity, Script to Screen and Nga Aho Whakaari showed concern for equity issues in their reference to Maori. (I'm coming to WIFT.)

There were 57 written submissions, 48 of them publicly available on the Ministry for Culture & Heritage’s website and some available on request, under the Official Information Act. People also made oral submissions, in camera and—I understand—unavailable under the Official Information Act.

Film Auckland (the first point of contact with the Auckland screen industry), almost uniquely, did mention gender:

Film Auckland suggests a more transparent and consultative process for selecting NZFC board members. Variety amongst members is important but there also needs to be greater representation from the screen industry. This diversity of representation should be based not only on gender and ethnicity but also on industry and locality.

My own submission to the review was simple (the most I could do at the time). Accompanying five draft chapters of my PhD thesis Autoethnography and New Zealand women’s participation in scriptwriting for feature films and a list of particularly relevant page references, so the reviewers didn't have to wade through the whole thing, I sent a single paragraph:

It is essential that any change to the Film Commission Act incorporates an explicit gender equity provision, to protect the interests of women writers and directors in whom the Film Commission has made measurably less investment than in men, without justification, for some time.

The chapters laid out the global context, the various gender statistics that I’d measured, and a complex web of possible reasons why the NZFC investment in women writers and directors was so much less than in men, in every programme, every year. They also referred to NZFC's acknowledgment, through the then CEO Ruth Harley, that it had a 'gender problem', following publication of the statistics in a report I made to the industry in 2008.

In contrast, WIFT wrote, in a 1,393-word submission:

Women participate in all roles and at all levels in the New Zealand film industry, in greater proportion than almost any other country in the world. Notwithstanding that under-representation in several areas remains an issue for women, the recent or impending release of high profile films Untouchable Girls: The Topp Twins, The Vintner’s Luck, Home By Christmas and The Strength of Water) demonstrates a high level of writing, directing and producing participation. We trust this is a sign of things to come.

Almost all the rest of the submission was general.

I’ve been a WIFT member for a while now. I’ve enjoyed WIFT’s free screenings of films like An Education, and last year an excellent evening seminar series. I know women who’ve taken part in WIFT’s mentoring scheme, as mentors or as mentees. I also presented my early research on NZFC’s dismal level of investment in women’s feature film development to a WIFT Auckland committee in 2007, and sent WIFT links to relevant articles I wrote for the web, like an analysis I made for WIFT NSW, hoping that all members could have access to the information for use if and as they wished. So this part of WIFT’s submission might have been a surprise, because there is as far as I know no evidence that shows that women participate in all roles and at all levels in the New Zealand film industry in greater proportion than almost any other country in the world.** And because women wrote only 16% of the films that the NZFC funded for production, from 2003-2009, and participated at a low level in other NZFC initiatives, with some notable, occasional, exceptions. And WIFT, like the NZWG and the SDGNZ knew that.

But it wasn't a surprise. Last year, for her birthday, I took a dear friend to a fund-raising WIFT screening of Christine Jeffs’ Sunshine Cleaning. As I remember it, in front of a full house of mostly women, the evening’s MC referred to an overseas article that asked “Where are the women directors?” She talked a little about the international issue, referred to some of the films listed in the WIFT submission to the NZFC Review and then asked again “Where are all the women directors?” And answered “In New Zealand.” The audience loved it. I didn’t want to spoil my friend’s birthday treat, or I’d have leaped to my feet and said “So how come only 9% of all our features and 16% of NZFC-funded features for the last six years (now seven years) have women writers and directors?” Over time, I’ve learned that WIFT prefers to celebrate local women’s successes and to support us through its mentorship programme and its Film School scholarship than to speak out publicly about local inequities that affect its members (as for example the NZWG did in its submission about generic problems for writers who seek NZFC development funding; as a member I appreciated this.

I was, however, surprised to read a little further on in the WIFT submission

We also strongly believe that industry knowledge and experience should be represented at Board level to inform strategy, and that appointments should reflect a commitment to ensuring women are equally represented at the Board table.

Since one strand in the complex web of reasons for the NZFC’s low investment in women writers and directors is that women do not necessarily support other women, having equal representation of women on the NZFC board would not necessarily help women filmmakers. It would however help women who want to play a role in governance. So I wonder why WIFT would seek equity for those women and gender diversity on the Board without seeking equity for women writers and directors within the NZFC's investments. A little further on, WIFT introduced its concluding summary: "WIFT applauds the achievement of the Commission to date".

I know acknowledgment and celebration of success is an important strategy. I love it: the clapping, the eating, the talk, the singing, the dancing, the flowers. Mentorships, workshops and scholarships are great, too. But, in my view they are not enough.

Collectively, the NZFC review submissions demonstrate, I believe, that the guilds and other organisations have a 'gender problem' that contributes to and reinforces attitudes behind the 'gender problem' at the NZFC; they welcome women as members but do not speak up about the inequities we face. For women, the 'do I want to do that?' and 'how could I do that?' of Escalator Te Whakapiki could however change, if the film organisations co-operated to help deepen and strengthen the talent pool and to support women ready to step up to their first features. Wouldn't it be wonderful if they did? New Zealand was the first country in the world where women got the vote; we could become the first country in the world where women write and direct half of all features.

5. 'how do I do that?'

So. Working through the 'how do I do that?' of Development, I've concluded that aligning our project with the international movement concerned with women's participation in filmmaking is a good idea. That's where understanding, support and audience will come from. A significant proportion of our Facebook members and three-fifths of this blog's readership belong outside New Zealand. And we now have a United States marketing consultant, Kyna Morgan, who offered her help via our website, has started her own connected blog, works on our Facebook page, and is coming over to help in the summer.

And it was lovely to join in the Cannes protest from here, to feel part of something bigger. And then, while the Cannes Festival was on, and one of her producers was there looking for traditional funding, Afia Nathaniel (pictured) launched her crowd funding website and Facebook page for her feature Neither the Veil Nor the Four Walls.

Afia's response to 'how do I do that?' is stunning and an inspiration. Her site is conceptually elegant and beautifully executed. And it nicely bookends The Age of Stupid's legendary crowd funding campaign, also initiated by women, as the two campaigns that changed crowd funding for ever. I've always had a little resistance to crowd funding, because the conversation about it has been male-dominated; and we've seen it as only a small component of funding for Development. But the Age of Stupid and Neither the Veil Nor the Four Walls complement each other to show what a beautiful thing crowd funding can be for women.

In the meantime, my steadfast belief that New Zealand could be the first country in the world where women write and direct half of all features affects my 'how do I do that?' Here at the end of the world women have a special blend of characteristics: talent, tenacity, courage, humour, inventiveness and warm hearts. New Zealand women just need a little push now and then, a very old woman told me yesterday, as she reminded me of the central place that women held in our anti-apartheid movement and in the protests against the Springbok Tour in 1981. Once we're into it we're unstoppable. And so are women around the world.

So today, at Development, we're on to it. Thinking about how best to do our project and to support others in the climb towards that fifty percent. About reaching around the globe, through blogs, phone calls and texts, Skyping, Facebook and Twitter, with downloads and streaming. And with co-productions, connections with incentives like our Screen Production Incentive Fund. New Zealand has co-production agreements with: Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Singapore, Korea, UK, Germany, Ireland, Spain. Happy to collaborate with any of you women out there in the world with ideas about these-- Tomorrow.

**The most recent research I know of is Lorraine Rowlands' thesis (2009, see sidebar for link) on freelance workers in the New Zealand film industry. She found that the overwhelming majority of her respondents felt that they were not sufficiently rewarded for their efforts and often found it hard to make ends meet financially. And she found that for women, the situation was even worse than it was for men.

Comments

hmm... a bit of a deafening silence in the comments section. I discussed your post above with an accomplished writer and director when it became apparent that quite a few folk (women) were irked by the domestic violence comments in particular.

She wrote back to me in an email:>>>I pretty much hate everything said in the blog - why isn't she working on her skills as a film maker instead of writing blogs about how unfair everything is?

It's hard to know how to engage with this polemic without it turning into a mess though. But yes, film making is bloody hard and unfair, and decisions get made on factors completely out of the control of the funding bodies even. It's good that we have some cultural soft money in NZ - but to get films made this needs to work in concert with international finance and market attachments. That's the business. You either try and try and don't give up and find other ways of doing what you want if the first plan doesn't work out, and so on and so on, or you give up.

I don't see how having a separate funding stream or competition for woman is going to do anything but infantilise women. Film making is NOT like the olympics for god's sake!<<<

Many thanks for this Anonymous. I really appreciate your response, and that of the woman who emailed you.

I'm having a quiet day remembering Merata Mita, who was unable to fulfil her long cherished dream of adapting Patricia Grace's "Cousins" as a feature film. But I'll respond fully to your comment soon.

For now, there's more about the ideas behind my references to violence against women in my Report to the Industry (2008): http://www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters/our-students/publications/marianevans-PhDreport.pdf, from page 23. In my thesis—coming online in the next little while—these ideas were further developed and include reference to Virginia Woolf's analysis.

I have a very different response to this. The thing that hit me after returning home to NZ was the many interweaving factors that made feel like an uphill battle working here in the arts field. It was really evident in a teaching context where I saw young people so much more hesitant and less strident than my experience of many of their overseas counterparts. This really concerned me as I see the fuel of creativity as being self confidence.

In terms of film making—being educated to the reality of the scarcity of women’s movies internationally and contrary to many people’s perceptions of NZ the lack of NZ women’s films getting made—helps. I see it as a means to enable women particularly young women yet to experience the world first hand to understand the playing field. It helps because it galvanises – I hear Jane Campion say:

We are women, we are only half the world, but we gave birth to the whole world. No one on this planet should be ignorant of our views or our voices.

And I think damn right!

But equally importantly knowledge can separate the challenges and identify the barriers, upping the likelihood of women not taking their losses as assessments of personal worth and losing confidence but rather an acknowledgment that they will be knocked back again and again but need to keep pushing.

Yes I am coming from the assumption women are as talented and able as men–something I believe! I don’t have a bar with the women are less able or don’t try hard enough bull shit. So when I see that so few of the stories on the big screen are made by us I think ok there are major barriers here–and the paths of entry, models in use aren’t working often enough for women. Ok it is complicated and I know it is hard for any film maker to make films be they female or male. But the issues for women are significantly different if so few of us are getting our work made and seen, so a separate dialogue seems called for and apt.

In this context I see Marian’s commitment to her own practise and to advocacy for women’s film including on going critiques of government agencies and current affairs as vital and valuable.

Anyway the models for financing and distributing films are breaking down as we speak so I see the up front virtual ticket to enable free distribution on the internet strategy of Development as a refereshing innovation to a global problem. And it is about time our cultural soft money which is generated by the effort of all NZers is distributed to all NZers including women.

I see Wellywood Women as being a positive a force for enabling encouraging and empowering women to make more movies. As proactive multi-directional opening out the issues finding a way forwards stuff!

I thoroughly appreciated your post. I get tired of having discussions with people about how women are still disadvantaged in the workplace in general - I think more so in arts that are based on securing sponsors/funding - and getting the same lame responses from men AND women about how it's the fault of women (as a gender) for taking time off to raise families, not being as committed to the job, etc. That's rubbish.

I think the fact that it took this long for a woman to actually win an Oscar - only the 4th woman ever nominated - in a category like directing is proof enough that women are underrepresented in the film industry. It's not going to stop me from trying or stop me from supporting my partner to keep working at it either. Even though woman-centric communities and businesses that grew in number largely in the 1980's have been dying off globally, we still need to strive to support our own.

I'm sure WellywoodWoman has seen these statistics, but this post drove me to do some research. These were shocking: http://www.wmm.com/resources/film_facts.shtml

Screw the film comission. Gender aside, they're just as bad as NZ on air, maybe even worse. Their selection process is completely usless. I agree with many of the points Gorden Campbell raised: http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2010/02/18/campbell-mallard%E2%80%99s-big-day-and-low-budget-films/

Hello again, Anonymouses All. It’s been hard to know how to respond to such a range of comments. They overlap, and they don’t. And I just wrote a response & it was too long for Blogger so my response to Anonymous(1) and Anonymous (4) is going to focus on fairness & be separate.

First, a big thank you @Erica: You sometimes describe yourself as a ‘feisty, hat-wearing’ person. Yep, love those hats. And with the feistiness comes ‘staunch’. Love having you in my life, love working with you on Development and that exciting third entity we two become when we work together. But your comment also made me rejoice at the magic of your unpredictability, that after years of knowing you and working with you, I can still feel surprised by what you say, do, write.

And thank you @Johanna, too. I don’t know who you are or where you live, but I was so warmed & encouraged by your response, delighted when you wrote that the post “drove me to do some research” and then you sent a link: Women Make Movies is so special, I think, their amazing work for women filmmakers over many many years. Lovely to think that somewhere out there you’re watching women’s films with a bit of extra info. & hope you stay in touch--

Again, @Anonymous (1), thanks for engaging, because there’s already a ‘mess’, globally, for women filmmakers, and I think that the more we talk about it the better. I’m intrigued by the accomplished writer and director’s first question. I think it’s possible, essential, to do two things at once, to work on skills and to speak out about injustice. And, @Anonymous (4) hello to you too, and thanks for your link, and for referring to NZ On Air as well as the NZFC.

Of course life isn’t ‘fair’. But when ‘soft’—taxpayer—money is involved I care deeply about fairness to women film-makers, within state-funded policies, programmes and processes. Because—as I wrote—New Zealand ratified CEDAW. We also have the Human Rights Act. And the Broadcasting Act, which requires NZ On Air “to ensure that a range of broadcasts is provided that reflects the interests of women, youth, children, persons with disabilities and minorities (including ethnic minorities) and also the diverse ethical and spiritual beliefs of New Zealanders”.

Women writers have always featured strongly in television, perhaps partly because of this provision in the legislation, and I’m fascinated, as the various screen media move towards convergence, that some women writers who've contributed to NZ On Air’s telemovie initiative since it started a couple of years ago—Fiona Samuel, Donna Malane and Paula Boock for instance—have started to develop features at the NZFC, forged a new pathway independently of the NZFC’s Short Film and Escalator programmes.

Yes, it’s good that New Zealand has the soft, state, funding, paid for by taxpayers, men and women. But I think we have to ask “Who benefits?” from this funding. What are the patterns of behaviour, conscious and unconscious, that result in gender inequity in NZFC investments in writers and directors? Why do so few women benefit? What do those women who do benefit have—or lack, or do—that other equally talented, skilled, but unfunded women storytellers don’t? Why do the soft funding statistics largely mirror the statistics from the United States where, although there are tax credit incentives in many states, there’s no soft funding as we know it? Do we tend to indulge men who want to make films more than women, privilege their story-telling? The only way we’re going to see more women’s features is if we all—women and men, fortunate and less fortunate—identify where the gendered problems are, talk about them, and seek solutions. In the same way that we identify and seek solutions for our individual projects. In the same way that we talk about other human rights issues.

I love stories that women tell, often constructed differently than men’s, and with women as central characters. I need other New Zealand women’s films. And the only way I can help resolve the problem is by recording the specifics of the problem where I find it and by talking and writing about it. As Meryl Streep’s said, studio executives (and here in NZ probably NZFC executives) need to learn again, every year that there’s a market for entertainment made for women and by women. I think it's good to remind everyone about this market as often as possible.

As a filmmaker I’m very blessed, with no complaints at all. And because I apply to the NZFC only for workshops (really looking forward to the romantic comedy one)—I haven’t had a project that I want to take there—I have no personal, film-related, reason to keep quiet. And I want to emphasise that my criticism is aimed at the NZFC culture, at systemic flaws, not at any particular individual(s). The hardworking NZFC staff were always friendly and helpful when I researched there.

Finally, I think that Olympic-medal-oriented goals where competitors also “try and try and don't give up and find other ways of doing what you want if the first plan doesn't work out, and so on and so on, or you give up” provide a good analogy with filmmaking. I understand the problems with gendered programmes. But staying with the already gendered status quo is problematic, too.

Francesca Jago won the V48Hours 2010 (http://www.v48hours.co.nz/2010/) Gaylene Preston/WIFT award for 'Best Female Director', with "Day One": http://www.vimeo.com/11352322. I asked Francesca what she thought about awards for women. Here's her response, with many thanks to her:

Well first of all it was an honour to win the inaugural best female director award, especially in my first year entering the comp. On the subject of female awards, I'm torn. On the one hand it's great that there are awards that only females can win which will no doubt increase female participation (which the industry desperately needs). On the other hand, it would be nice to win on an even playing field with men to show women can do it just as well. Then again, in all the top award shows there is always best male and best female actors (not a best actor overall), so why not best female/male directors. I know I got both praise and flack for the award. Men saying "why isn't there a best male director award", or "women need a special award to win?!" but I also had both men and women who were stoked for me. I think it's definitely what V48hours needs though and I imagine the number of awards will keep expanding.

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

After The Waterfallis the only New Zealand feature in the New Zealand International Film Festival that a woman—Simone Horrocks—has written and directed. It premiered in Beijing earlier this month, as part of the 5th New Zealand Film Festival in the People’s Republic of China. Here's Simone speaking at the premiere.

Simone first attracted international attention when she was a semi-finalist for the prestigious Sundance Institute/NHK Filmmaker's Award in 2001. She has written and directed several short films, notably Spindrift, winner of the Best Panorama Short Film award at the Berlin Film Festival, and New Dawn, commissioned by the Edinburgh Film Festival to mark the launch of UK Film Four's Lab. I knew almost nothing about her. So I peppered her with emailed questions. And was truly delighted with her generous responses.

Cushla Parekowhai and I went to previews for Dana Rotberg's new feature White Lies/Tuakiri Huna – Cush in Auckland and me down here in Wellington. And the film excited us. White Lies/Tuakiri Huna, described as 'a story about the nature of identity: those who deny it and those who strive to protect it', comes from Medicine Woman, a novella by Witi Ihimaera, who also wrote Whale Rider. (Witi is Cushla's cousin. Witi's father, Tom Smiler, and Cush's grandmother, Pani Turangi, were raised in the same household in Manutuke.)

Dana wrote, in the book that accompanies the film, that after she read Medicine Woman –...Paraiti, the medicine woman, was a stubborn presence who refused to leave. I felt that was a clear sign that the story...was speaking to me from places other than where the original work had come from. Places that belonged to my intimate family history and my most unresolved conflicts as a person in the world. It was a call from the core of my origins to l…

Back in October, just before the #directedbywomen screenings in Auckland, I tumbled down a steep flight of wooden steps in Auckland's Ayr Street Reserve. Cracked one ankle and broke the fibula in my other leg. Missed spring gardening. Missed all of Wanuri Kahiu's visit (but not some beautiful responses from the many people she inspired and revitalised).

Couldn't transcribe or edit my #directedbywomen Skype interview with Isabel Coixet. Couldn't edit and publish other almost-ready interviews I cherished. Couldn't organise more screenings that filmmakers had requested, with the films' directors beamed in to Te Auaha's small treasure of a cinema for Q & As, also via Skype.

About Me

I'm Marian Evans. This blog continues 'Development', my post-doctoral project, and supports women who make movies, in all forms, for any platform. Globally, starting in Aotearoa New Zealand. In 1893, women here were first in the world to get the vote and I'll be celebrating that in 2018, with #DirectedByWomen Suffrage125.